HB R10 TQ, 2nd & 4th at 1/10th IC World Championships

Mon, 19th November 2012

The upcoming HB R10 nitro competition racing car achieved
history at last week's IFMAR 1/10th IC World Championships, not
only achieving the feat of having the most cars in the Main Final,
but setting an unbeatable TQ at the hands of Finnish racer and HB
team member Teemu Leino! Leino started from pole, ahead of newly
crowned electric touring car World Champ Groskamp, while HB
teammate, touring car runner-up and 2-time IFMAR champion Atsushi
Hara started from 3rd, with 2006 electric touring car World
Champion Andy Moore started from 10th after a very solid run in the
1/2 Final which put him in the Main Final ahead of many former
World and European champions in just his third nitro touring car
race ever!

In the hour-long Main Final, Teemu was one of the first to have
engine problems after running for nearly ten minutes straight at
0.2 and 0.3 seconds per lap faster than the second place driver.
Several long pit stops to tune his engine and a flame-out would
prevent Teemu from challenging for the lead after 1/3rd distance,
but when his car was running smoothly he was easily running much
faster than the lead cars and fought strongly for fourth and fifth
place until the nearly the end of the race. Andy Moore, who started
from 10th on the grid, was able to challenge for fourth and fifth
from the halfway point of the race and was running smoothly and
consistently. For a relative newcomer to the class, making the
World's Main Final was a fantastic achievement! After earning a 2nd
place at the electric on-road Worlds earlier this year, Andy surely
has shown that he possesses the skills to compete at the highest
level in every on-road class. In the last 30 minutes of the
60-minute final, the driver that would prove to be the most threat
to Meen V, who started from fourth, inherited third when Groskamp
spun out on the first corner and took over first place when Teemu
had his engine problems, would be Atsushi Hara. Hara ran his first
set of tyres for 40 minutes, according to plan, then ran long fuel
stints in an effort to catch Meen. In the end Hara's lap times were
approximately the same as Meen's and a valiant attempt to run an
extra lap on low fuel meant that he ran out of fuel on the track
and had to have the car recovered by the marshals. In the end, Hara
finished in a solid second place, and has shown once again why he's
a threat in any class of racing he chooses to try! Without doubt,
this is a great debut for the HB R10, with enviable results against
the toughest competition. With the smallest factory team at the
Worlds, all three drivers got into the Main Final, the most cars of
any of the teams at the event. The R10, with Teemu Leino at the
wheel, set the fastest qualifying times and had the fastest racing
pace, eventually finishing second in an epic struggle that was
eventually shortened a few minutes by rain. The HB R10: